Application of geostatistics in facies modeling of Reservoir-E, “Hatch Field” offshore Niger Delta Basin, Nigeria

Abstract Lithofacies are very influential in the transmission of fluids within the reservoir. The objective of this study is to use geostatistical techniques of sequential indicator simulation (SISIM) a variogram-based algorithm (VBA), single normal equation simulation (SNESIM) and filter-based simulation (FILTERSIM) of multiple-point geostatistics (MPG) in developing realistic facies model. A reservoir sand package “Reservoir-E” was correlated across five wells in the field. Synthetic seismogram of well HT-1 was generated, and Horizon E picked on seismic section to produce time and depth surfaces of the reservoir. The conditional if statement to generate lithofacies was applied on the extracted volume of shale data within “Reservoir-E,” and the data were inputted in Stanford Geostatistics Modeling Software for facies modeling. The first realization from SISIM was converted to a training image used for MPG. Visually, the MPG algorithm of SNESIM and FILTERSIM produced realization that is substantially better and more realistic than the VBA of SISIM. The magnitude of correlation coefficients of algorithms was carried out using the mean and variance of realizations, the results revealed mean and variance magnitude of correlation coefficients between SISIM and SNESIM with 0.8933 and 0.9637, SISIM and FILTERSIM with 0.8639 and 0.5097 and SNESIM and FILTERSIM with 0.9717 and 0.8603. The results revealed a very good mean and variance magnitude of correlation coefficients between SISIM and SNESIM; good between SISIM and FILTERSIM; and very good mean and variance correlation coefficient between SNESIM and FILTERSIM. The qualitative interpretation of the model built with SNESIM and FILTERSIM clearly detects lithofacies in the field which makes them a better algorithm in facies modeling.